Igtip Kangertiva, also known as Comanche Bay ( da, Comanche Bugt). is a fjord in Eastern

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is ...

. It is part of the

Sermersooq Sermersooq (, da, sted med meget is, lit=place of much ice) is a municipality in Greenland, formed on 1 January 2009 from five earlier, smaller municipalities. Its administrative seat is the city of Nuuk (formerly called Godthåb), the capital ...

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality ...

History

During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

weather station A weather station is a facility, either on land or sea, with instruments and equipment for measuring atmospheric conditions to provide information for weather forecasts and to study the weather and climate. The measurements taken include tempera ...

of the

US Army Air Corps The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the aerial warfare service component of the United States Army between 1926 and 1941. After World War I, as early aviation became an increasingly important part of modern warfare, a philosophical ri ...

Spencer Apollonio, ''Lands That Hold One Spellbound: A Story of East Greenland'', 2008 pp. 272-275 and the

US Coast Guard The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and law enforcement service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the country's eight uniformed services. The service is a maritime, military, mu ...

was established in Comanche Bay. The decision was taken in the spring of 1942 and the USCGC Comanche (WPG-76), a ship of the

Greenland Patrol The Greenland Patrol was a United States Coast Guard operation during World War II. The patrol was formed to support the U.S. Army building aerodrome facilities in Greenland for ferrying aircraft to the British Isles, and to defend Greenland ...

, was sent to survey the fjord. The USCGC Comanche reached the site in July and the bay was subsequently named after it.1941: The Coast Guard and the Greenland Operations – Coast Guard
/ref> Besides the weather facility the US military wanted a base from which the warplanes of

Operation Bolero Operation Bolero was the commonly used reference for the code name of the United States military troop buildup in the United Kingdom during World War II in preparation for the initial cross-channel invasion plan known as Operation Roundup, to be ...

that were forced to land on the

Greenland ice sheet The Greenland ice sheet ( da, Grønlands indlandsis, kl, Sermersuaq) is a vast body of ice covering , roughly near 80% of the surface of Greenland. It is sometimes referred to as an ice cap, or under the term ''inland ice'', or its Danish equ ...

could be rescued. Owing to its closeness to the inland ice Comanche Bay was deemed a favorable place from which to send rescue patrols. However, when shortly thereafter a

Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engined heavy bomber developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). Relatively fast and high-flying for a bomber of its era, the B-17 was used primarily in the European Theat ...

crash-landed on the ice sheet not far from Comanche Bay, a rescue operation ran into difficulties because of treacherous crevasses near the crash site and two men were lost. Following this accident the base was closed in the fall of the same year. On account of war-related priorities the Comanche Bay base was reestablished in 1943 by Major John T. Crowell, along with a facility at Cape Cort Adelaer further south down the coast. The weather station was located on top of a high hill that was named Atterbury Dome, after the captain of the USCGC Comanche. The coastal stations were abandoned at the end of the war.

Geography

Igtip Kangertiva or Comanche Bay lies at the southwestern limit of

King Christian IX Land King Christian IX Land ( da, Kong Christian IX Land) is a coastal area of Southeastern Greenland in Sermersooq Municipality fronting the Denmark Strait and extending through the Arctic Circle from 65°N to 70°N. History This area was named in ...

, a few miles east of

Pikiulleq Pikiulleq is a bay in eastern Greenland. It is part of the Sermersooq municipality. Geography Pikiulleq Bay is located at the northern end of King Frederick VI Coast, north of the Fridtjof Nansen Peninsula and to the north of the Søren Norby ...

. Its mouth lies between Ole Romer Island to the west and Aqitseq to the east.''Prostar Sailing Directions 2005 Greenland and Iceland Enroute'', p. 103 The fjord is oriented in a roughly NNW/SSE direction. There are a number of low islets in its western shore close to its mouth.

Bibliography

* Wallace R. Hansen. ''Greenland's Icy Fury''. Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series. 1994 .

References

External links

The lost squadron and Comanche Bay
* ttps://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/high-risk-rescue-attempt-greenland.html War History - A plane found 38 feet under the ice: A Daring, High-Risk Rescuebr>‘Frozen in Time’: The fate of brave airmen, locked in the ice
Fjords of Greenland World War II sites in Greenland {{Greenland-geo-stub

History

Geography

Bibliography

See also

References

External links